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I have a dualboot set up between Linux Mint 14 Cinnamon and Windows 8.Everything is working flawlessly, but there's one thing I can't figure out. In windows I have two hard drives, one SSD with two partitions (one windows & one linux) and a 1tb hdd for user data (windows) and storage data.The storage partition never mounts and I am unable to locate it... Can anyone help me with tis?

I find it strange that sda (1TB hdd) only has one partition while the Disks app show that there are 5.The users partitions is there as well, but the size of the data partition is added to it.The data partition remains visible within Windows 8. I suppose it should be sda5?

bigj231 wrote:You need to use gdisk or parted instead of fdisk. fdisk only works with MBR. The question is why aren't you using GPT on your SSD?

I figured that would be the problem... I just don't know much about how linux works. I tried remounting the drive without any result.I've read a thing or two about gpt, but I don't really know what it all means and what benifits it holds.Can you please elaborate?

The big one is more than 5 partitions. There are ways around this in MBR, but they are kind of a pain IMO. There's also some supposed SSD life benefits and speed increases, as well as EFI compatibility. If you're using BIOS, MBR is fine, but I still prefer GPT. If you have EFI, you will see a speed increase with GPT and EFI boot. Can you see the drive in any file managers? Sometimes mounting partitions is weird. Try restarting and trying again. Also, try mounting via the mount command.

Do not try to change your SSD to use GPT. Windows locks its boot mode to the firmware type: It boots in BIOS mode only from MBR disks, and in EFI mode only from GPT disks. Since you're booting Windows from the SSD, and it currently uses MBR, switching to GPT would render Windows unbootable.

For more background information on GPT, see my GPT fdisk documentation, and particularly its page describing GPT.

To help with your problem, I can think of several possible causes:

Damaged partition table -- You can check for this with GPT fdisk (gdisk), and in particular use its "v" command. If that reports problems, they may be the cause of your inability to access the disk. Repairs depend on what sort of problem you might find. See the GPT fdisk Web page on disk repairs for information, or post back with details.

Incorrect partition type code -- In gdisk, any NTFS partition on a GPT disk should have a type code of 0700 when you view the partition table with "p". If you don't see such a partition on your GPT disk, then it may simply have the wrong type code set. You can correct this with the "t" command followed by the "w" command to write your changes to disk.

Missing drivers -- It could be that your disk is plugged into a motherboard connector for which no Windows drivers are installed. There's a Windows hardware information tool. (I've forgotten what it's called or precisely how to locate it, and that might have changed with Windows 8, anyhow.) You can use that to see if Windows can identify the hardware at all, or if it's just the partition table or filesystem that seems to be missing.

Filesystem damage -- The filesystem may be damaged, or it might not be NTFS at all. Normally, you can correct damaged filesystems from Windows using the text-mode CHKDSK utility or its GUI counterparts; but if the filesystem isn't showing up at all, it might not actually be NTFS. The output of "sudo blkid" from Linux might be a useful diagnostic to help narrow down such possibilities.

There are likely other possible causes; these are just the ones that spring to the top of my head.